Silica waveguide, Planar Lightwave Circuits (PLCs) ideally exhibit polarization modes that are independent from one another. However, certain lightwave components such as directional couplers, exhibit polarization crosstalk—a phenomenon in which the polarization modes are coupled. Unfortunately, such polarization crosstalk and polarization mode coupling defeats many of the techniques that are used to achieve polarization independence—a necessary characteristic of many optical devices.